Oklahoma Exhibit Lauding WWII Comanche Code Talkers Bared

(Above left) Comanche code-talkers during the Second World War belonging to the US 4th Signal Company; (Below, Left) The Comanche Code Talkers Exhibit in Lawton, Oklahoma; (Right) The Comanche Code Book

A Nazi flag seized at the height of the Second World War together with personal photos and army uniforms are some of the mementos featured in the newly opened exhibit devoted to lauding World War II’s Comanche code talkers.

the said display was bared last September 26 in Lawton, a southwestern Oklahoma city, and is in honor of of the 17 Comanche Indians who helped the Allies during WWII by using their native language as a secret code conveying military messages.

The opening of the said fair fell completely along with the imminent awarding of Congressional Gold Medals to these WWII Comanche heroes.

WWII Code Talking the Comanche Way

The Comanches were not the only native Americans who aided during the Second World War as code talkers – there were also the Meskwakis, Basques and the Navajos (who were the inspiration for the 2002 war movie Windtalkers).

Long before that, code talking had started in World War I with the Choctaw Indians acting as pioneers.

Adolf Hitler had known this all along so prior to the World War II outbreak, he sent a group of German anthropologists in America to learn the various languages of the natives. However, the task proved too hard for them as their were many native languages and dialects that existed – one for every different tribe.

It was also because of this that the Americans did not do a large-scale implementation of code-talking especially within the European Theater. Instead, they used various code talkers from different Native American tribes for the task.

There were 14 Comanche code talkers who participated in the Invasion of Normandy and afterwards, served on to the European operations under the 4th Infantry Division.

As Hugh Foster, whose father had supervised the code talkers in WWII, put in, the Comanche language did not have the necessary words to describe military-connected things like tanks and such and even the people. So, the code talkers improvised and used descriptive words in their place.

Tanks became “pregnant turtles” and bombers were “pregnant airplanes”. machine guns became “sewing machines” in the Comanche language and Adolf Hitler was dubbed as the “crazy white man”.

for every regiment, there were two Comanche code-talkers assigned. The rest were in the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division. Just after landing on Utah Beach on the 6th of June, 1944, Comanches started their jobs transmitting coded messages. A number were wounded though none were killed.

Wallace Coffey, chairman of the Comanche Nation, said that majority of the people did not know Comanches had worked as code-talkers during WWII because of their pledge of secrecy.